Reflections of Rajaram Bojji

" For all you know Sonia too is only a mere pawn in the game but a visible icon to them as long as the purpose is served. She is just riding a tiger-- a dangerous one with uncomfortably long neck capable of reaching the rider too-- is my view. She initially wanted to go away with children after Rajiv's assassination, but the mafia in Congress prevailed to make votes out of the tragedy. You will be surprised if you analyse, the utter powerless feeling that the most powerful live day to day, forced to move only in a particular direction because of the balance of arguments for or against a decision never agrees to their own judgment, but the appearance has to be kept up , to survive in their own position, compromising with life daily."

That’s where Bueno de Mesquita began programming his computer model. It is based loosely on Black’s voter theory, and it works like this: To predict how leaders will behave in a conflict, Bueno de Mesquita starts with a specific prediction he wants to make, then interviews four or five experts who know the situation well. He identifies the stakeholders who will exert pressure on the outcome (typically 20 or 30 players) and gets the experts to assign values to the stakeholders in four categories: What outcome do the players want? How hard will they work to get it? How much clout can they exert on others? How firm is their resolve? Each value is expressed as a number on its own arbitrary scale, like 0 to 200. (Sometimes Bueno de Mesquita skips the experts, simply reads newspaper and journal articles and generates his own list of players and numbers.) For example, in the case of Iran’s bomb, Bueno de Mesquita set Ahmadinejad’s preferred outcome at 180 and, on a scale of 0 to 100, his desi...

I always wondered at the vast spread and depth of innate intelligence and wisdom prevalent in the country but clouded by very myopic visions of so called political leaders who collect a few aggressive self-serving followers and then aggressively exploit the society for their own benefit. The good natured remain mute and allow the nonsensical behaviour, there by abetting the crime. How come persons who denigrate the Constitution of the country, are protected by those sworn to protect the Constitution? There cannot be any political cause greater than the Constitution, I believe! Public good cannot mean out right justification of parochial attitudes. We today witness a strange case where there are no more Indian leaders-- but have regional chieftains. Who is responsible for this? It took years of effort and hard struggle for Tilak, Ranade, Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Jayaprakash Narayan, Phule, Ambedkar, Satyam,Rajaji, Netaji .. to name just a few , but many more ordinary people from all walks...